Movies You Might Have Missed: Tom Holland's Fright Night
Holland's directorial debut about a vampire neighbour is a rare comedy horror, and is set to be released for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK
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Your support makes all the difference.Stranger Things was undoubtedly one of the television events of the year, combining as it did elements of the work of Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. The countless homages to the latter has led to renewed interest in big screen adaptations of the horror maestro's novels in the 1980s; films such as Cujo and Firestarter. Fright Night (1985), while not actually based on a King novel, is a massively entertaining horror clearly inspired by his work.
Eureka Entertainment is set to release Fright Night for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK in the coming weeks and it is not before time. Tom Holland's directorial debut tells the story of Charley Brewster, a young man shocked to discover that his next-door neighbour is a vampire. Understandably, friends and relatives are sceptical so Charley enlists the help of an ageing TV show host who acted as a vampire hunter in old films.
Holland conceived the film with Vincent Price in mind for the role of Peter Vincent, the erstwhile screen star (the name itself is a nod to Price and Peter Cushing). Price declined as he no longer wished to be typecast as a horror actor and Roddy McDowall stepped in. McDowall's performance, as a washed-up ham attempting to revive the glory days of his youth, is exemplary. In a sweet coda, Holland and McDowall became firm friends and the actor eventually invited the young filmmaker to a dinner party with Price in attendance. Price made clear he was flattered by the homage, paid tribute to the film and labelled McDowall's performance “wonderful”.
Chris Sarandon, best known for playing Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride, is on similarly supercilious form here as the neigbour with a dark secret while William Ragsdale, who beat out competition from the likes of Charlie Sheen to land the role, is excellent as a teenager convinced he's right and the world is wrong and, in this rare instance, is spot on.
Like An American Werewolf in London, this is a rare comedy horror where the scares are every bit the equal of the jokes. The film was remade in 2011 with Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell in the lead roles, but accept no substitutes: the 1980s original deserves iconic status and helped paved the way for other wry and knowing genre pictures like Scream more than a decade later.
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